Animal Imagery in 'King Lear'

King Lear

In the play King Lear written by William Shakespeare a collection of images are used to express different points Shakespeare is trying to relay to his audience. One reoccurring image that kept popping up was animal images. Shakespeare displays these animal images when King Lear and many of the other characters in the play talk about Goneril and Regan. The animals that Lear and the other characters compare the two sisters to are not very pretty. They are compared to the likes of tigers, serpents, and even monsters. These reoccurring images have an important idea behind them that Shakespeare hopes to communicate his readers.

Shakespeare waste no time in comparing Goneril and Regan to animals. When Lear parts from Goneril at the end of Act I, after she has sneered at him and diminished the number of his retainers, he calls her a “Detested kite” (I. iv. 269.). He also compares her to “the sea-monster” (I. iv. 268.), by which he possibly means a mythological monster that would betray its own father. King Lear also comments on his daughters ingratitude using animal imagery when he said,” How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child” (I. iv. 295-296.). Lear comments once more on his daughter’s “monster ingratitude” (I. v. 40.). Lear is showing how he feels about how his daughters are treating him by comparing them to unpleasant animals.

Lear in scene IV has a quarrel with his other daughter, Regan, where again he uses animal images to show how his daughters are sinking below manhood to animals. Lear seeks out his daughter, Regan, at Gloucester’s castle, and finds out that her husband has put his faithful friend Kent in the stocks and that both husband and wife have retired to bed and do not wish to see him. When Regan finally comes down, she tells him “You should be ruled, and led by some discretion that discerns your state better than yourself” (II. iv. 147-149). Lear responds by saying “struck me with her tongue, most serpentlike, upon the very heart. (II. iv. 159-160). Lear here again is describing Regan to a serpent, which is a large poisonous snake. Both daughters seem to him now like unusually cruel animals. They show this when they shut him out into the stormy night.

In the storm scene, Lear’s hurt from his daughters affect his attitude to the mad Tom of Bedlam (Edgar).